In the context of so-called “autonomous” vehicles, in which driver intervention is reduced, or even practically nonexistent, to drive the vehicle, the arrangement of the passenger compartment may be configurable by modifying the orientation and/or the position of the seats, since they no longer necessarily need to face the road. It is thus for example possible to provide for turning the seats toward one another and/or placing the seats in elongated, more comfortable positions for the vehicle's passengers.
Such vehicles are generally configurable in a manual driving configuration, in which a driver can drive the vehicle using a steering wheel, and an automatic driving configuration, in which the driver does not intervene and therefore does not use the steering wheel.
It may therefore be advantageous to provide a steering wheel that is also configurable so that the steering wheel is easily accessible in the manual driving configuration and so as to free space in front of the driver in the automatic driving configuration when the steering wheel is not used.
Document FR 2,779,695 describes a steering wheel comprising two gripping elements making it possible to free a space below the steering wheel by pivoting one of the gripping elements around the body of the steering wheel to fold it down on the other in a retracted position.
However, in the retracted position, the freed space is not optimized in the front-back direction of the vehicle. Indeed, the gripping element folded down against the other occupies a space extending behind the other gripping element, which remains fixed, which increases the bulk of the steering wheel in the front-back direction. Furthermore, the aesthetic aspect of the steering wheel is not satisfactory, since the gripping element folded down on the other protrudes from the body of the steering wheel in the retracted position.